


Leave Before the Lights Come On

by rissalf



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, a smattering of angst, a whiff of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 14:52:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15075521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rissalf/pseuds/rissalf
Summary: It's a bad idea; they do it anyway.Written forAlways Sunny Rarepairs Two: Electric Boogaloo





	Leave Before the Lights Come On

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SunnyRarePairs2](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SunnyRarePairs2) collection. 



> **Prompt:** Charlie and Dee are left alone after PTSDee. They agree that she's not "rock bottom".

Dee is entirely too sober for this.

Granted, too sober still has a good buzz to it, but it’s nowhere near as wasted as she’d like to be. Ideally, at this very moment, she’d be staring down the barrel of brownout drunk. Drunk enough that all of the day-to-day bullshit just slides right off her exquisite back. Drunk enough to deal with the assholes she begrudgingly calls friends and the piss-poor (and all-too-often smelling of piss) customers who never leave a fucking tip. What she’d really like to be right now, is rock-bottom drunk.

Hah, and there it is: the rejection, the humiliation, the fucking indignity. They come bubbling to the surface with all the pungency of questionable sushi from that back-alley joint off Broad Street. Goddammit.

The thrill of showing that stripper jerk-turkey Mike what real rock bottom looked like wore off a hell of a lot faster than Dee had anticipated, and when one plummets from a high as great as that one, the comedown is a real kick in the balls. What a high it was, too. Watching him shake his junk in his kid’s face – mere millimeters from her gleaming white teeth – felt great; watching their expressions contort in horror and disgust as realization hit them was masterful. Better than crack; no contest. Yep, she was on top of the goddamn world – a world in which it’s shit or get shit on, and for once she was the one dropping the ol’ deuces. Try mending that relationship now, dickhole. God, who knew ruining somebody’s life could feel so goddamn good, right?

_Who’s rock bottom now, bitch?_

After a shitty night’s sleep and four soul-destroying hours spent at Paddy’s, the answer is, once again: Dee.

Everything would be fine if she could get a goddamn drink to take the edge off, to dull the nagging sensation of shame trying to pull her under, to stuff that shit down with brown. What she gets is a lecture from Dennis on how they all need to stop “stealing” drinks from the bar because it’s “not how you run a goddamn business, morons.” Where the fuck did that even come from? Power-tripping dickwad. Dennis couldn’t have picked a worse time to wake up and suddenly care about the bar, and Dee isn’t convinced he doesn’t do this shit on purpose, just to be an asshole.

The final indignity comes when some old boner smacks her on the ass, and when Dee turns to bust him in the face, he startles – utterly aghast – and stammers, “Oh, fuck. You looked a lot younger from behind.”

Yep, way too fucking sober.

****

Since she can’t get a damn drink in her own bar, Dee settles for the next best thing. She’s sat on an overturned milk crate in the alley behind Paddy’s, stealing a few minutes for a smoke before Dennis comes out to bust her balls about doing actual work at work, again. (Nevermind that he spends half of his day preening in front of a hand mirror, but whatever.) A few minutes turns into an hour easily enough, and eventually Charlie discovers her hiding spot next to the dumpster and joins her.

Dee doesn’t add much to the conversation – content to enjoy the smoke and the stale alley air, and still in a fog over the injustice of the whole rock-bottom debacle – but she doesn’t have to. Charlie’s been rambling for half an hour about some new plot to win over his beloved Waitress, and it fills the silence well enough that Dee can zone out and enjoy her nicotine daydreams in relative peace.

She doesn’t know how he does it day in, day out though. He’s been chasing that bitch for as long as Dee’s known him, and after an endless stream of rejections (each one more brutal than the last), he still gets up and keeps right on following her like it’s fucking _Groundhog Day_ , and he’s whatshisface trying to woo that chick with the curly hair. Or something. Actually, Dee thinks, groundhogs are like giant rodents anyway, so maybe that’s not a bad metaphor really.

But how the shit has he not hit rock bottom yet? Maybe he’s just that damn oblivious. It is Charlie, after all. The man drinks paint for shits and sleeps half-naked with a little troll of a man that no one in their right mind would voluntarily go to bed with (for free, anyhow). But deep down, he has to be affected by the rebuffs.

“Alright, Charlie,” she interrupts at last, “how do you do it? What’s the secret?” She takes a long, deep drag from her cigarette and exhales slowly, the smoke dancing furiously overhead before disappearing into the looming darkness of the alleyway.

He stops mid-sentence – something about robots and cats that Dee wasn’t paying attention to – his eyes blank and glassy and his mouth half open, which means he’s either not understood the question, or he’s just high as shit and not understanding words at all. “Oh, well, see the cats wouldn’t be-”

“No! Goddammit, Charlie. I mean, how do you keep taking this shit over and over and over? You know, with the Waitress being a mega cunt and all that.” Dee cringes just slightly; Chardee time is supposed to be a judgement-free affair, but sometimes the old habits are too hard to break. “Sorry.”

He shrugs. “She’ll come around,” he says simply. “I’ve made some real progress lately. Like last week, I told her that her eyes were as shiny as the water beetles I sprayed for in the basement, and she told me to ‘fuck off, Charlie.’”

“How is that progress? You getting off on this shit or something?”

“What- No?” He seems genuinely confused by the idea. “She usually says ‘fuck off _and die’,_ so I’m picking up on some definite good vibes there.”

Dee wrinkles her nose and forces her mouth into something resembling a smile in an attempt to not shit all over his stupid dream. Nailed it? Of course she nailed it.

He doesn’t speak for a while, and it’s a cloying, uncomfortable silence, like bathing in molasses. If Charlie were one for sulking, Dee would worry that she’s pissed him off, but if that were the case he’d probably just spit in her face and run off to hang with the guys. This is something else. Dee can’t help but feel sorry for him, just a little, but really Charlie is no more pathetic than she is, hanging around the bar getting shit on, bouncing from dickhole to dickhole but still believing one of these assholes will turn out to be a _rich_ asshole that will whisk her away like in _Pretty Woman_. (With less prostitutes.)  

But goddamn does the waiting suck a big ol’ bag of dicks. And the more Dee thinks about it, the madder it makes her. They’re better than this. They’re worth more – no matter what those asshole friends of theirs keep saying. Maybe they really should have followed through on that plan to run away a few years back. Sure, it was something they came up with during a massive coke binge, but that doesn’t make it any less valid.

“You ever wish we’d really got the hell out of here, Charlie?” She nudges him gently, a sly smile at her lips. “You, me and Peter Nincompoop?”

He laughs, and one corner of his mouth pulls higher than the other in that dopey sort of half-grin, in a way that she’s pretty sure he’s never smiled at the Waitress. Dee can’t help but feel an odd pang of satisfaction at that, and for some reason it’s making her heart pound in her ears. Or that’s just the alcohol withdrawal setting in. Goddammit, Dennis.

“You know you’re not,” Charlie says after a few more moments of quiet. “Rock bottom.”

It’s a sweet gesture, and Dee manages a “thanks, Charlie,” barely audible, before giving over to the wariness that comes with knowing the guys all too well. “I swear to God you’d better not be working up to saying I’m something lower than rock bottom, because so fucking help me-”

“No. No, I mean it. That guy was a dick.” He swipes an empty beer bottle littering the alleyway and tosses it at the dumpster, missing by a good three feet.

 _“Yes,_ thank you. He absolutely fucking was.” She pauses a beat and smirks. “Dick was really small, too.”

Charlie wrinkles his nose like he can smell the bullshit she’s selling. “No, it wasn’t.”

She sighs. “No, goddammit, it wasn’t.”

Dee crushes the spent cigarette under her shoe. Dennis is going to come out any second and get all indignant and shrill (the fact that he hasn’t means Frank’s probably got him good and occupied with some crackpot scheme), but the very prospect of going back inside for another few hours has Dee eyeing the dumpster for refuge. Until suddenly – an idea. Why go back inside at all?

“Let’s get outta here,” she says, hopping to her feet and tugging at Charlie’s shirtsleeve.

“What about work?” he asks, but he’s already up and flicking his cigarette behind him.

Dee can’t help but snort. As if they’ve ever given two shits about work. “Fuck ‘em,” she grins. “Come on.”

****

They wander the streets of Philly for a while. First in a half-baked search for Peter Nincompoop – surprisingly hard to find despite the fact that she’s a big white shit machine (but then, it was a good seven years since they set her free) – and then in search of a way out of the bad part of town they wandered into. (Well, the badder part, anyway. It’s chilly though, so at least the muggers and meth heads are mostly indoors, or wherever muggers and meth heads go when it’s gross out.) Eventually, they wind up at the Def Poetry club and drop a few rhymes – and bash some dumb cunt who dared to heckle their brilliant performance – before getting kicked out and ending up at Charlie’s apartment.

They’re entirely too sober for this.

Sober enough that they’ll remember it. Sober enough that it will hurt if things inevitably go wrong; if he starts calling her a bird again or she mocks his intelligence. If he goes back to stalking his beloved Waitress. _Cunt._ They’ll have this memory hanging over them, pouring a little extra salt in the wound. And it isn’t if anyway; it’s when. Because if there’s one thing that’s a constant with the Gang, it’s the fierce and unnatural ability to maintain the status quo at all costs.

So yeah, it’ll kick like a motherfucker.

They do it anyway.

Blind with lust and buried longing, they stumble around the tiny apartment, knocking over just about everything in their path. Dee bristles at the sound of glass splintering against the floor – and she catches herself nearly snapping at Charlie to be more fucking careful – but in the end she decides she wouldn’t really mind breaking it all. It’s not her stuff anyway. Smash all this shit and let this reckless night leave as big a scar on the outside as the one gaping within.

“Charlie,” she breathes, when he presses her against one of the random doors that seemingly leads nowhere and sucks at her neck. His breath is hot, and the hairs of his beard tickle as he sucks and nips at the soft skin, and his hand roughly grasps at her breast like it’s Christmas morning and she’s the one thing he’s been wishing for all damn year. She can feel him hard through his jeans, and it occurs to her that she doesn’t even remember what his dick looks like. Is he cut? Is he thick? Short? Who the fuck knows. The last time they did this they were nearly brownout drunk, and the pieces of memory are jagged and frayed like every piece of clothing Charlie owns.

Dee makes quick work of unbuttoning his jeans and yanking them down, and Charlie moans as his cock is exposed, muttering a breathless “fuck” when Dee wraps her fingers around him. He’s large, even in her hands. Thank Christ – motherfucker is hung.

He doesn’t let her stroke too long, and she doesn’t protest when he pins her arms overhead; doesn’t try to move even though his hands aren’t quite large enough to hold her in place if he wanted to. He’s quick to pull her shirt up and off but fumbles with the bra, his fingers rough against her back from where he bites the nails and cuticles. Charlie is utterly incapable of being gentle, what with his calloused hands and overall lack of grace, and Dee is thankful as shit there’s no chance of this devolving into some torturously saccharine session of lovemaking. Way too many of the assholes she’s brought home have turned out to be complete saps in the sack, and Dee’s sent every one of them out the door and gotten herself off on her own right after.

She shimmies out of her jeans and underwear, and when Charlie dips his head to swirl his tongue around her nipple, the anticipation becomes too much to bear. “Fuck me, Charlie,” she says. “Right goddamn now. Fuck me.”

Normally he’d bitch about her being bossy, but even Charlie must recognize that now is not the time, and so he obeys. Dee wraps her long legs around him as he pushes inside her with a grunt, and sweet mother of _fuck_ that son of a bitch is thick. _“Fuck,_ Charlie,” she gasps.

Wordless but eager, Charlie is all hands and tongue; its easy to forget just how strong he is until he's got his arms wrapped around her, supporting her weight almost effortlessly as he fucks her against the door. Dee doesn’t usually let whichever fella she’s brought home do the driving; it gives them too much control. She’d rather be the one dictating how fast and hard things go. It allows her the illusion of being bold and uninhibited – something men love when they’re fucking but hate when it comes to actually committing to a woman. _Pussies._

But it’s Charlie guiding this ship, and Dee hardly gives that fact a lasting thought. He’s not like the men she usually brings home anyhow; he’s _Charlie._ That makes it different, somehow. And although she can’t remember a damn thing about the last time they did this, she trusts him to get her off exactly the way she needs.

“Oh, goddamn,” she gasps. Every fucking movement is hitting just the right spot, and honestly, if she’d known (or, uh, remembered) Charlie was this fucking good, she would have jumped his bones years ago.

“This, uh, this working for you?” he asks – half teasing, half genuine concern – and when Dee clenches around him in response, he chokes out a strangled cry of pleasure, clearly close to the point of no return.

His eyes never leave her, and she isn’t sure she likes that. The eye contact is too much somehow, too intense and too personal, and if this were just about riding someone’s dick and going on with your life afterwards, she wouldn’t give a shit. But it’s not. Goddammit, there’s feelings there, and doing it this way is just gonna make it hurt more later on. She wants to look anywhere else and ride this out until she’s shaking with the ecstasy and thoroughly regretting a whole host of life choices, but she can’t. Or she won’t, maybe. This would be so much simpler if he’d just fucked her ass instead.

“I wanna see your face when I come,” he groans. He snaps his hips to punctuate the request, and goddamn if that isn’t one hell of a good argument. “You’re so fucking pretty.”

They stare into each other’s eyes, sharing heated, ragged breaths – the intensity almost comical – until Charlie breaks first. He comes hard, his palm smacking the doorframe as he curses with an almost feral intensity and pushes up into her a few more times until he’s panting and exhausted, his forehead glistening with sweat.

There’s barely time to wonder if she’s going to have to get herself off – most men tune out the moment their dick is spent – when Charlie spins them both and tosses Dee onto the futon, burying his face in her pussy without the slightest bit of hesitation. It’s the smoothest thing the motherfucker has ever done in his entire goddamn life.

Every slurp and moan coming from Charlie’s mouth inches Dee closer to her own orgasm, and she arches against him as he licks at her slick flesh with unconstrained desire. She’s getting louder by the second – sprinting towards the finish line – whining and whimpering as the gentle throb between her legs becomes an unbearable bomb about to blow. _Motherfucking hell, why don’t we do this more often?_ His tongue feels impossibly long and wide – hitting every fucking sensitive spot, and when he thrusts his fingers inside her and bears down to suck at her swollen clit, Dee can’t hold on any longer.

“Goddammit, Charlie, _yes!_ Oh, fucking _Christ-”_

She comes with her hands gripping his hair and her legs wrapped around him, while a barrage of profanity flows from her lips like spilled ink. Holy mother of _fuck_ \- As the waves of one hell of a fucking orgasm shuddering through her body, Dee concludes that being too sober suddenly feels just fine, at least for the moment.

“You taste good,” Charlie murmurs. He joins her on the lumpy pull-out and they lie together in breathless silence for a while, neither really wanting to ruin the moment. What does one even say after fucking one of your best friends? By the time Dee decides to try and figure it out, he’s already fast asleep.

Charlie’s snoring offers all the soundtrack this particular afterglow will allow, and it takes every bit of self control to stop Dee from elbowing him in the ribs to wake his ass up and make him share the uncomfortable silence with her. It’s not as if she wants to lie in bed and talk while he strokes her hair or anything like that. But goddamn does the quiet wear much too snug; it’s like being trapped in that fucking back brace all over again.

It’d be better if she left, and she knows it. Frank will be back at some point, probably, and beside that, it’s just what one-night stands do. But that’s not what she really wants, and it’s not like they could ever be that anyhow. God, can’t they just skip this shit and go straight to all the overly familiar nonsense like watching shitty movies in their pajamas and fucking whenever they feel like it? She sighs a little louder than necessary and glances at Charlie, his lips parted and a thin string of drool connecting his mouth to his pillow, and ultimately still very much asleep. Goddammit.

It’ll be fine. It’ll scab over like the rest of the wounds she’s been dealt over the years, and Dee will steel herself behind another coat of acerbic varnish, all shiny and new and harder than ever.

So long as the fucker doesn’t wake up and realize he’s hit rock fucking bottom.

It’ll be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> This idea was a great jumping-off point; I hope you enjoy, anonymous prompter. :)
> 
> Come and yell at me: [riddlelvr.tumblr.com](http://riddlelvr.tumblr.com)


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